The majority of people polled and editorials in the press downplay the opposition’s scaremongering about the entry of the headscarf in the university amphitheatres. For many, expression of religious beliefs should be unhindered in a democracy. Some even venture to propose that students from other religions, particularly Christians and Jews, should also be allowed to wear symbols of their respective faith.
For opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) and other conservative formations, the basortusu on campus is a Trojan horse aiming at eroding secularism from the inside. They predict that this is the first step in the government’s hidden agenda to gradually transform the Turkish political system into an Islamist regime governed by Sharia law, in the image of, at best, Malaysia, or, in the worst scenario, Iran.
A recent incident seems to partly justify such concerns. At the end of January, Husnu Tuna, an AKP member of parliament from Konya, said in public that his party’s longer-term goal was to extend the removal of the ban on the Islamic headgear to female state officials, who are not at present allowed to be veiled. The statement prompted Prime Minister and AKP leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan to order an investigation by his party’s parliamentary board against “dissident” Tuna.
It is quite certain that CHP will oppose any amendment to the Constitution before the Constitutional Court. The question, however, many ask sotto voce, is what will the Armed Forces (TSK) do. In April 2007, when the prospect of an Islamist accessing to the Presidency became a close threat, the head of the General Staff, Gen. Yasar Buyukanit, issued an ultimatum insinuating that a military coup should not be excluded.
Gul has in the meantime moved into Ataturk’s former apartments at Cankaya Palace, and the Army was given by the AKP-dominated parliament the task to chase the separatist Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK) within Northern Iraq, which should keep the officers busy for the years to come.
The chapter is, nevertheless, not closed. Last Saturday, more than 100,000 people demonstrated at Antkabir, Ataturk’s mausoleum in Ankara, against the proposed changes in the Constitution. Similar rallies were held in 13 other provinces throughout the country.
Academics are also deeply divided. Thirteen hundred professors and instructors have signed a public declaration in favour of lifting the ban. But all the rectors and the remaining staff have either opposed the move or remained silent. The latter claim that the new law will create chaos in higher education establishments and subject secularist female students to peer pressure and hostile behaviour by Islamist male students.
The ban of the headscarf has since 1981 resulted in 1.5 million female students quitting higher education. Gul’s own wife, Hayrunnissa, was rejected form Ankara University because of her non-compliance with the secularist apparel rules and in 2002 sued the university before the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), but eventually withdrew the complaint.
The ECHR, in another case by a Turkish student, upheld the ban in 2005. Many see in the proposed constitutional amendment the First Lady’s fingerprints. (END).
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